October 19, 2011: Morning Roundup

…Our force is already feeling the effects as we continue to ask our men and women in uniform and their families to make sacrifice after sacrifice on this 21st Century Battlefield.

We must develop a national security strategy that is not budget based but rather requirement based. That means we must conduct a threat analysis across the geographic areas of responsibility and then match a capacity and capability to thwart those threats. We must end the failed process of telling the military… this is what you get, go defend us.

I believe there are inefficiencies we can eradicate in the Department of Defense, mainly we should move from a Cold War era “forward-deployed” force posture to a “power projection” posture. It also means that we must stop the practice of nation-building/occupation style warfare and move towards strike operations…something which we shall discuss later.

Let me share some budgetary facts:
– $1.36 trillion used to prop up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could have funded the entire base budget of the Department of Defense for three years.
– $79.69 billion used to bailout auto makers could have funded Navy shipbuilding for over five years. Since 1990 we have gone from 546 naval vessels to 285 currently.
– $535 million taxpayer dollars dumped on Solyndra, which is not bankrupt, could have completed this year’s backlog of ship maintenance and had nearly $200 million left over.
– $3 billion spent for “Cash for Clunkers,” could have purchased some 125 transport vehicles for ship to shore operations.
– China now has over 60 attack submarines, while we are falling behind our minimum requirement of 48. The taxpayer funds spent to bailout AIG could have purchased 44 attack subs.
– The taxpayer funds we pay in interest to China on our debt could buy almost three F-22 fighter jets a week…

Response: Politicians propose things that can pass. Problem-solvers propose things that can work. One of the worst instincts of Washington types is to judge an idea not on its substantive merits, but on their perception of its political viability. I do not underestimate the challenge of getting any good idea through Congress, but I have said all along that if you propose a good idea, and the people understand the idea, they will pressure Congress to pass it.

So there. I welcome the robust discussion and the many questions that are being raised about the 9-9-9 plan. Asked and answered. What else do you want to know?

Here is the truth about the Ground Zero grifter, the story that the media never tells you. This lowlife has defaulted on two bank loans, hasn’t paid his back taxes, was busted for prostitution. Gamal not only beats people up and threatens Muslims who speak out against the mosque, but he is also a tax cheat, owing a quarter of a million in taxes while defaulting on not one, but two bank loans. All this while being evicted from his Soho offices for non-payment of rent. And Mayor Gloomberg licks his boot. He has him over at Gracie Mansion for dinner. Why? What did this hustler do other than disrepect, offend and degrade millions of Americans with his 15-story triumphal mosque on Ground Zero?

Now Con Ed is planning to evict him for non-payment of rent. Go Con Ed! I will happily send my check off early to the electric company this month…

The Vatican has condemned Saturday’s violent clashes in central Rome including an attack by protesters on a church in which a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary were destroyed.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said he “condemned the violence and the fact that a church was desecrated by some protesters who broke in and destroyed some images.” He referred to the clashes in Rome as “horrific.”

The 18th-century church of Santi Marcellino and Pietro is near St John Lateran square where much of Saturday’s violence occurred.

“When I came down, I saw the entrance door had been smashed in,” the church’s parish priest, Father Giuseppe Ciucci, was quoted by Italian media as saying.

“The Virgin Mary’s statue, which was at the entrance, had been taken away and I saw it had been thrown into the street and smashed,” he said.

“I went into the sacristy and I saw the door there was also destroyed. The large crucifix at the entrance had been vandalized,” he added

It was the news the world breathlessly waited for immediately after the 9/11 terror attacks: a report of the first American troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

All at once the world’s attention focused on an iconic photo of those Special Operations Forces doing something no American military had done in nearly a century: They rode horses into combat.

Their secret mission: secure northern Afghanistan by advising the warring tribal factions that formed the Northern Alliance. During the 2011 Veterans Day Parade on November 11, a new monument to these men — and to all Americans in uniform — will make its way down New York City’s famed Fifth Avenue on the way to its final home, a stone’s throw from Ground Zero….